Computational Complexity and other fun stuff in math and computer science from Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch

Monday, October 22, 2012

Song of the Complexity Classes

I tweeted the audio of this song last week and here is the video. Recorded at Dagstuhl on October 18th. Written by Fred Green who also plays piano. Performed by David Barrington with Steve Fenner on chorus.

Fred gives apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan, the Complexity Zoo, and Tom Lehrer

Lyrics by Fred Green, copyright 2012

To the tune of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General"

There's P and NP, BPP and ZPP and coNP,And TC0 and AC0 and NC1 and ACC,There's PSPACE, LOGSPACE, PPSPACE and ESPACE, EXPSPACE, IPP,And LIN and L and Q and R, and E, EE and E-E-E.There's SPARSE and TALLY, PL, P/Poly, NP/poly,There's PromiseP and PromiseBPP and PromiseBQP,There's FewP, UP, QP, UE, N-E-E, N-E-E-E,And EXP and NEXP, FewEXP, and NE-EXP, and also Max-N-P. And EXP and NEXP, FewEXP, and NE-EXP, and also Max-N-P And EXP and NEXP, FewEXP, and NE-EXP, and also Max-N-P And EXP and NEXP, FewEXP, and NE-EXP, and also Max-N, Max-N-P.There's Sigma_nP, Delta_nP, Theta_nP, Pi_nP,We know BPP's in Sigma_2P intersection Pi_2P.And NP to the NP to the NP to the NPTo the NP to the NP, that's the pol-y-nom-yal hierarchy!

10 comments:

Yep, this isn't going to do much to remedy the stereotype of computer scientists as autistic taxonomists.

I propose a new dichotomy. We'll call a problem BQOPTZX3 if it can be solved in less than O(n^(3+log(n))) time, and we'll call it SEMI-NON-BQOPTZX3-DUAL if it can't. Now open the floodgate of papers-- publish or perish, people!